In the second-to-last episode of the current season of Veep, Selina tells her daughter Catherine about the time her father took her to a Nixon rally as a child. “Daddy leaned in to me and he said, ‘You know, a lot of people don’t like Nixon, but by God, they respect him. And that’s you, peanut.’”
It’s appropriate that the moment that instigated Selina’s political career — at least in her memory — is a thinly veiled insult. Veep, the sharpest-written comedy on the air, is so full of spectacularly imaginative put-downs it’s a wonder the show’s plot doesn’t collapse under the weight of them all.
We’ve combed through all of Season 5, which ended on Sunday night, for the show’s most creative, stinging slurs. It may not come as a surprise that Selina herself is the character most likely to dispatch a cutting remark — or that those remarks are often targeted at her daughter and her unruly hair. After all, this is a woman whose own mother, upon visiting her daughter in the Oval Office for the first time, had only this to say: “I do hope you’ll wait till your hair grows to have your portrait painted.”
You know what they say — every leader sets a tone. Behold, a compendium of Veep Season 5 insults.
Selina Meyer on Catherine Meyer
- “The only thing Catherine ever finished was an entire ice cream cake.”
- “Catherine, why is that your hair?”
- “She’s a lesbian, Mike. She’s not a werewolf. Though either one would explain why she never shaves her legs.”
- On Catherine’s hair: “What’s happening with these tentacles here? Are they gonna get put away or something?”
- On Catherine’s hair, again: “Oh, look Catherine. You fixed that there, didn’t you? Except that it’s still just a rat’s nest in the back.”
- “Even labor and delivery with her was a nightmare.”
Selina Meyer on Mike McLintock
- “Too bad you’re not counting your missteps, you’d be done by breakfast, right?”
- “When does the White House’s Most Useless Press Secretary List come out? I can’t wait to see who’s number one this year.”
Selina Meyer on Gary Walsh
- Charlie Baird: “I feel like that guy doesn’t like me very much.” Selina: “Who? Gary? Come on, that’s like saying the cat doesn’t like you or that table doesn’t like you.”
- “You’re hanging onto me like a skin tag.”
Selina Meyer on Marjorie Palmiotti
- “I’m excited to get to know fun Marjorie, too. When is she arriving?”
- “Let me tell you something. Marjorie is insufferable.”
Selina Meyer on the Queen of England
- “She’s a fucking cunt. You didn’t hear it from me.”
Selina Meyer on Congresswoman Nickerson
- “You’re playing a very dangerous game of chicken with the head fucking hen, ’cause if I don’t win the White House, O’Brien is gonna sink your stupid boats and you’re gonna look like a hair-sprayed asshole in your 1980s mother-of-the-bride dress. And if I do win, I will have my administration come to your shitty little district and shake it to death like a Guatemalan nanny. And then I’m gonna have the IRS crawl so far up your husband’s colon, he’s gonna wish the only thing they find is more cancer. So can I count on your vote, or do I need to shove a box of White House M&Ms up your stretched out, six-baby vag?”
Selina Meyer on Minna Häkkinen
- “How is it that that Asperger salad inserted herself into this situation?”
Selina Meyer on Tom James
- I LBJ’ed you! I am the LBJ queen and you are Sergeant Suck-It Shriver!”
- “General George Washington could climb out of his grave right now and I would rather eat out his zombified wooden asshole twice a day than be his vice fucking – fucking anything!”
Selina Meyer on Jonah Ryan
- “Put that world’s tallest pile of garbage on the phone!”
- “Hey, hunchback! I don’t know what you’ve been trying to do instead of win, but I’m guessing it has the word ‘anal’ in it.”
- “Oh, H.R. Fucknstuff, Jonah won the election?!”
- “Is my entire presidency about to have its neck snapped by Congressman Lennie here?”
- “Get that clowntard Jonah on the phone right now.”
Jonah Ryan on Selina Meyer
- “Let me tell you something else about Selina Meyer, our commander-in-thief. She has destroyed the economy, made a mess of the Middle East, she ruined Thanksgiving, and that’s all in just the first ten months in office.”
Tom James on Selina Meyer
- “I don’t have to explain that I am not someone who would piss away my presidency on a bunch of half-ass decisions.”
Amy Brookheimer on Selina Meyer
- “She has gone full-metal Nixon.”
Dan Egan on Selina Meyer
- “Selina Meyer is a second-rate mediocrity whose only achievement is single-handedly tanking the economy.”
Amy Brookheimer on Dan Egan
- “Right now you’re about as toxic as a urinal cake in Chernobyl.”
- “I fully support your decision to live as an ugly woman.”
- “Jesus, Dan, you wouldn’t know the smart move if it bent you over and fucked you with a Coke bottle.”
Dan Egan on Jonah Ryan
- “If you listen to me instead of your only two brain cells busy butt-fucking each other somewhere in the vast expanses of your misshapen skull, then maybe, Jonah, you might have a chance at becoming the first mentally impaired Frankenstein’s monster to ever win an American election.”
- “It’s the 50 Hottest Staffers, Jonah, not the 50 People Most Likely To Kill Themselves Before Trial.”
- “[You] look like someone melted Play-Doh all over a flagpole.”
- “Get the Hunchback of Notre Hampshire down to the floor.”
Amy Brookheimer on Jonah Ryan
- “You are a 7’7 goony-looking Lithuanian who’s going to drop dead of Marfan”
Jeff Kane on Jonah Ryan
- “Listen to me, you walking trisomy. I could get dog shit in a condom elected in New Hampshire. You are my puppet. I let you dance.”
- “I am the one who got us this far, you sentient enema.”
- “Back to the natural habitat your nitwit mother found you in, you fucking shaved Sasquatch.”
Jonah Ryan on the American Public
- “I work in the fucking West Wing, you Pepperidge Farm ad mother fuckers! Fuck you!”
- “Sit your fucking mom jeans ass down!”
The American Public on Jonah Ryan
- “His head is too big for his body, but then sometimes his body is too big for his head.”
- “He’s the wrong shape!”
Jonah Ryan on Mike McLintock
- “Sometimes, like, in a futuristic… like a sci-fi movie, you’ll see, like, a robot that’s like the old version of the robot and you kind of feel bad.”
Tom James on Mike McLintock
- “One of the most extraordinarily incoherent people I’ve ever met in my life.”
Ben Cafferty on Mike McLintock
- “Right after the inauguration, we’ll show Mr. McShittock the door.”
- “Mike, you fucking jagoff!”
Bill Ericsson on Mike McLintock
- “Mike is an idiot. It’s amazing he got a driver’s license.”
Roger Furlong on Mike McLintock
- “This is my fat johnson and you can suck it as long as you promise not to put your dirty gay mustache on it. What is that, some kind of side-effect from your AIDS medication or did you shave it off Freddy Mercury’s corpse?”
Roger Furlong on Jonah Ryan
- “You look like Clark Kent if they dug up Christopher Reeves’ corpse to play the part.”
Roger Furlong on Gary Walsh
- “Truckstop glory hole.”
Roger Furlong on Dan Egan
- “The other side of the glory hole.”